The Civil Services Preliminary Examination 2013 will take place on 26th May 2013. Now is the time to consolidate what all have you learnt in the last six to seven months and prepare for the challenge ahead. In order to clear the paper, a candidate should have a very clear cut strategy for both Paper-I (General Studies) and Paper II (CSAT).

General Studies (Paper-1)
It is very evident from the civil services paper of last few years that the questions in the paper would test the conceptual clarity of an individual. It is important here to pay attention to the paper of last year. The distribution of the questions was as follows: Science and Technology (21), Economics (20) and geography (18). Close to 10 questions were from ecology and ecosystems. The question paper was lengthy and this fact is underlined by the presence of three statement based questions (25) and two based statement questions (14).

For performing well in the paper, one should focus on the topics that are more important (e.g. Science and Tech., Ecology and Environment and Economics etc.). Another feature of the civil services paper is that the current affairs is asked in the ambit of different subjects and hence, news and information of current events should be related to the subject per se.

CSAT (Paper-2)
I would recommend that one should attempt paper-2 in rounds. Round-1 should be devoted decision making, interpersonal skills and syllogism (15 minutes). Round-2 should be devoted to the questions that can be done in 30 seconds to 60 seconds (25-30 minutes). Any question that takes more than one minute to solve should be immediately dropped. In round-3 reading comprehension questions should be taken up (25-30 minutes) and in the last round those questions that were taken up by now should be taken up. This strategy would ensure that a candidate will go through the entire paper and he/she will not miss any of the easy questions.

According to the CL academic team a score of 210-220 (80-90 in GS and 120-130 in CSAT) marks out of 400 would ensure a call for the main examination.

Best of Luck
Team Civils!

The Countdown for CSP

The Civil Services Preliminary Examination 2013 will take place on 26th May 2013. Now is the time to consolidate what all have you learnt in the last six to seven months and prepare for the challenge ahead. Here, it is very important to highlight that the preliminary examination is the most difficult stage (competition-wise). From the statistics it is clear that only 5% (approx) candidates are short-listed for the main examination. However, the pass percentage for the main examination is close to 25% and that of the interview stage is close to 33%. So, one should take the preliminary examination very seriously. At the same time, I would also like to highlight that the preliminary examination was envisaged to filter out non-serious candidates from the entire pool of the civil services aspirants. In order to clear the paper, a candidate should have a very clear cut strategy for both Paper-I (General Studies) and Paper II (CSAT).

General Studies (Paper-1)
It is very evident from the civil services paper of last few years that the questions in the paper would test the conceptual clarity of an individual. It is important here to pay attention to the paper of last year. It would not be incorrect to say that the paper tested a candidate on General Studies Aptitude. In terms of distribution, maximum questions were from Science and Technology (21) closely followed by Economics (20) and geography (18) respectively. One very bold mention in the syllabus (Civil Services Notification) was Ecology. Close to 10 questions were from ecology and ecosystems. The question paper was lengthy and it required a very keen sense of reading to decipher the exact meaning of the questions. This fact is underlined by the presence of three statement questions (25) and two statement questions (14). Going by the level of difficulty of the paper, one can infer that a net score of 80+ marks can be considered a good score. It is expected that the paper would follow the same pattern and most of the questions would test a candidate on conceptual clarity and not on facts.

For performing well in the paper, one should focus on the topics that are more important (e.g. Science and Tech., Ecology and Environment and Economics etc.). Another feature of the civil services paper is that current affairs is asked in the ambit of different subjects and hence, news and information of current events should be related to the subject per se.

CSAT (Paper-2)
The first CSAT paper of UPSC was replete with challenges for one and all. The paper had a heavy bias towards reading comprehension. Close to 30 questions of reading comprehension were bilingual (Hindi and English) and 9 questions were from reading comprehensions, which were in English language only. Most of the reading comprehension questions were inferential in nature and required a thorough reading of the passage. There were 8 questions of decision-making and there were exactly on the same pattern as was given in the CL’s Test Series. One interesting feature of these questions was that there were no negative marks for an incorrect answer. However, in the notification it was clearly mentioned that there will be questions for which differential marking scheme will be followed. These questions seem to belong to the same category. The syllogism questions were very challenging.

It can be safely said that quantitative aptitude was the easiest section of the paper. In total, there were close to 30 questions in Quantitative Aptitude/DI/LR. A serious test taker would finish this section in less than 40 minutes. On behalf of CL, I would recommend that one should attempt the paper in rounds. Round-1 should be devoted decision making, interpersonal skills and syllogism (15 minutes). Round-2 should be devoted to the questions that can be done 30 seconds to half minute (25-30 minutes). Any question that takes more than one minute to solve should be immediately dropped. In round-3 reading comprehension questions should be taken up (25-30 minutes) and in the last round those questions that were taken up by now should be taken up. This strategy would ensure that a candidate will go through the entire paper and he/she will not miss any of the easy questions.

According to the CL academic team a score of 200-210 (80-90 in GS and 120-130 in CSAT) marks out of 400 would ensure a call for the main examination.

On Behalf of CL, I extend my best wishes to all civil services aspirants.

The first CSAT is over and the dust has settled down over the content, direction, syllabus and many other things. However, not many have delved into the issue of the purpose of CSAT. What does UPSC want to achieve through the incorporation of an aptitude test? How is it an improvement over the previous paper? And above all, what qualities UPSC is looking for in the Civil Servants of tomorrow (given the challenges posed by Liberalization, Globalization and Privatization and accountability and good governance)? These and many more questions are yet to be answered. However, I am surprised by the views that many test takers carry and disseminate. Some feel that it is a process of sidelining the test takers from vernacular medium, few others feel that it is done to promote students from science/engineering/commerce backgrounds; and there is no dearth of people who feel that UPSC has merely added to the burden of CS (Civil Services) aspirants by including aptitude testing. Nothing could be farther from the truth and the step to include a separate paper for CSAT is done after careful deliberation. Following are the few benefits of including a full paper of aptitude testing in the civil services examination.

One has to understand the basic dynamics of the situation in which UPSC has decided to incorporate a full paper of aptitude testing (through CSAT). It is beyond doubt that aptitude testing was part of the preliminary examination for many years. However, the number of questions was as low as 15 out of 150 questions. The cut-off for the GS paper (assumed for 2010) is close to 40 questions so a test taker could afford not to attempt these questions and still get through the preliminary stage. This was not a healthy sign for any examination and hence a change was badly required. Second, more than 20 subjects were available for the test takers for the preliminary examination and there were few highly sought after subjects like Public Administration, History, Geography and Sociology etc. These subjects were most sought after because the scaling process favoured the test takers appearing from these subjects and anyone who appears from say Economics, Mathematics etc would have found it difficult to clear the preliminary examination (the scaling method works against them as it allocates the number of seats according to the number of test takers from a particular subject). This is also one of the primary reasons why UPSC never divulged the scaling process adopted by it. Third, as already told, there were more than twenty subjects available for the test-takers and these paper were of different difficulty level and it was very difficult for the UPSC to remove the error of differential difficulty through another tool of scaling. Still, It was impossible to maintain a uniform level of difficulty among all the papers and this also breached the fundamental right of equality of opportunity in the matters of public employment. So, this system of multiple papers of different difficulty levels was not serving the desired purpose. Fourth, if the main examination tests a test taker understanding on a subject, then why do we need two steps of the same thing (the preliminary examination also did the same). So, the preliminary examination was testing a candidate on a subject and then the main examination again tested the same candidate on the same or another subject.

One more benefit of inclusion of CSAT, which is not the direct outcome, is that it improves the employability of the CS aspirants. Most of the test takers prepare for the examination in full time mode. They prepare for this examination only and, generally, are not in a position to prepare for other examinations (given the exhaustive nature of the examination). By the time, a test-taker exhausts his/her attempts, he/she is over age for many other examinations like Bank PO, SSC, CDS etc. So, inclusion of CSAT will also prepare a CS aspirant for these examinations (Bank PO, SSC etc) and his employability will improve. This is a very important fringe benefit of the inclusion of CSAT.

So, through this analysis, I would like to encourage the CS aspirants that they should prepare for the examination in the right spirit. They should not be swayed by the unfounded myths about the examinationand should apply their aptitude to decipher the meaning of things around them. This will also help them to come up trumps in the examination.

All the best!!!

CL brings you the answer key for CSP Paper - I & Paper - II.
Students can access the e-OMR for CSP Paper I and Paper II to get their personalised score*.